The Origins of the Kindred
Alexander Smith
Many theories and neo-religious doctrines abound as to the origin of the Kindred, all of which are heavily biased by what the believers want to be true. For the purpose of this entry, I will expound on my own bias. I am a relatively open-minded evangelical Christian, a Camarilla member in good standing. I am a supporter of the Intelligent Design theory as far as the mortals go. I am a Ventrue, and I know my clan's shortcomings: we see ourselves completely above the mortals, which is no surprise since we are so capable of controlling them. I have had exposure to three basic theories of our origin: the Caine theory, the Setite theory, and the Evolutionist theory, and I am a supporter of none of these, although the Caine theory is more appealing to me than the other two.
The idea that we evolved at some point from humanity is often proposed, and while it seems simple and possible to an extent, we must then come to the fact that there is such a thing as the supernatural, that many of our kind have abilities that are truly supernatural. For instance, the abilities of Dominate and Presence may be just subconsciously controlled manifestations of extreme hypnotism and mesmerism, but what of the Lasombra shadow abilities, or the Tremere magicks, or the Giovanni Necromancy? They cannot be so easily explained. How did we get here? We're rather an evolutionary dead-end, you must realize. We reproduce using the bodies of another species, we feed from that same species and each other, we do not breathe, our internal organs have no function with the exception of our hearts and brains. We are dead. We cannot have evolved, but we exist—unless you really want to discuss nihilistic theory in the middle of this.
If you take the Setite point of view, we're all the creations of the Egyptian god Sutekh, aka Set. The dead god Set. The Followers of Set are his children, and the rest of the Clans were apparently created to "serve" this dark power and his favored ones when he is resurrected by the faithful efforts of his children. Load of nonsense, if you ask me or any other Ventrue. I mean, really, they expect a Ventrue to serve someone of another clan willingly. Not likely. Nonetheless, if by some very odd chance it does happen to be true, I am not looking forward to the Second Coming of Sutekh.
And then there's the Myth of Caine. In Genesis, Cain slew his brother Abel because God liked Abel's gift better, and became the first murderer. For his sins, God condemned him to a horrible fate. According to the Myth of Caine, this fate was to wander forever in the Land of Nod, cursed to never again see the light of day and live forever, drinking of the blood of the mortal. And apparently, Caine got lonely, so he passed the "Curse" on. I think it says he sired three childer, who combined sired a total of thirteen. And these thirteen are the founders of our clans. Right. Then the Flood (yes, Noah's), came and killed all but the strongest vampires…namely, Caine and his childer and grandchilder. The rest died, so they started the clans over. Caine decided to leave the ruling to Ventrue (that's our admittedly biased myth) and Lasombra got jealous and killed him off, but his childer survived. Thus began our little feud. Anyways, that lot was called the Antediluvians, which the Camarilla denies the existence of for some reason that I don't know or care about. To finish, Caine's supposed to have his own Second Coming, where he kills the Kindred who have disappointed him and takes the rest to forgiveness and salvation. Not really looking forward to that one either. On the other hand, this is the one where I actually have a chance, unlike if it turns out that it's Sutekh or Jesus that I have to worry about, so I'd prefer this future to most. Still, I'm going to withhold further opinion, beyond the fact that I think that every theory that I've talked about here is utter bullcrap, and I'm willing to let it go down to a shrug and a "who cares?" Anyways, best of luck to all, whichever Second Coming we get if any.